Final days to have your say on Tileman House

The deadline for having your say on Tileman House is Sunday 01 March, so you have today and the weekend to get your views in.

So far we've had another huge response to the campaign to halt the fifteen-storey tower on Upper Richmond Road: over 150 local people have had their say using my survey; and a similar number have contacted the council direct.

Barely a dozen people have submitted comments in support of their ; and of these it seems that some come from an address that doesn't appear to exist or are in fact objections mistakenly logged by the council as supportive comments.

If you want to have your say before the deadline, the quickest way is to email planningapplications@wandsworth.gov.uk citing application 2008/5428. Do please copy me - stuart.king@putneylabour.org.uk - in on your email as it will help me to better represent local opinion on this issue.

Justice Minister visits Putney

Earlier this evening, I had the pleasure of hosting Bridget Prentice MP, Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, who came to address a meeting of Putney Labour members at Putney Library.

Bridget, as well as being a long-serving Minister, has been East Lewisham's MP since 1992 and was a councillor in Hammersmith & Fulham before her election to Parliament, so knows our patch pretty well.

Dozens of local members turned up to listen to Bridget talk about her ministerial duties, which include getting young people more involved in their community and engaged with politics, which is an issue close to my heart in Putney. Bridget also talked about national politics, and the importance of areas like Putney for Labour - she is just the latest senior Labour figure who I'll be bringing to our constituency to raise local issues with.

Government forces economic reality on train companies

Following my recent report on the government forcing South West Trains to keep Barnes ticket office open pretty much on current opening times, the news that train companies have been denied their request for further inflation-busting ticket incresaes is also good news for commuters.

Train companies have been allowed to increase fares above inflation for years, partly to get investment back into the rail network after years of undefunding. But with inflation approaching zero, all of a sudden the train operators have decided they want a new formula that gives them increases unlinked to inflation.

That would have meant that while workers struggle with pay freezes or even cuts, travel costs would have continued to escalate. I'm therefore really pleased the government gave short shrift to these greedy and unaffordable dreams by the companies.

It means that if the inflation-measuring Retail Price Index (RPI) is negative - prices are actually falling in the real world - in July (the month ticket price changes are calculated for the following January), then in 2010 ticket prices too will become cheaper.

"About time too" many of us will say. Just as bonuses for senior bankers who have done immeasurable damage to our financial system are an outrage, so too are ever-rising fare prices coupled with ever-poorer services for commuters.

Town Centre Partnership not fit for purpose

Last week the Putney Town Centre Partnership held one of its regular meetings. This body is a collection of representatives of local business leaders, a couple of Conservative councillors, John Horrocks of the Putney Society and Labour representative John Slater, a Putney solicitor and Honorary Alderman of the borough.

At my request, I asked John Slater to raise the Tileman House planning application at the meeting: because the substantial loss of office space these plans entail and the impact that will have on the local economy should be something that concerns the partnership.

I was immensely disappointed with the response of the Partnership, which I would go so far as to characterise as pathetic. Despite support from John Horrocks, the meeting - chaired by Tory Councillor Jim Maddan - decided that the only aspect of the plans it felt worthy of comment was the fate of the three trees that will be removed by these plans.

All well and good, but what about the loss of employment opportunity - and the knock-on impact that will have on the retail and food and drink sections of our local economy? Surely these are matters a town centre partnership should be concerned with.


The Conservatives have a long track record of neglecting our town centre - which is why it's in the state it is today. But what is the point of having a town centre partnership if it can't even find something to say about plans that will have such a significant impact on the town centre and its economy.

Inquiry launched into Putney Tory donor

The Electoral Commission is - at last - investigating the Belize billionaire who contributed thousands of pounds to Putney Conservatives in the run-up to the last General Election.

Lord Ashcroft, who operates out of Belize refuses to disclose whether he pays tax here in the UK. British electoral law bans donations to political parties from non-British nationals or companies not trading here. But Lord Ashcroft uses a registered British company called Bearwood Commercial Services to channel over £3.6 million of funds to Justine Greening and dozens of other Tory candidates.

It is at best questionable whether this sort of bending of the rules meets the letter of the law (hence the inquiry) but it certainly does not comply with the spirit of it. There is nothing wrong with anyone making political contributions but there is a great deal wrong with non British nationals interfering in - some might say rigging - our elections with overseas cash.

If the Electoral Commission's investigation finds that the Conservatives have broken the law then Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives should be obliged to repay every single penny of the £19,733 they took from this source.

£19,000 may not sound that much in the context of the £3m+ given in total, but in context, constituency political parties like Putney's are only allowed to spend about £10,000 once a general election has been called - so Lord Ashcroft not only paid for their entire campaign but gave them £9k on top!

Below is the register of contributions to Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives since 2003: you can check for yourself by visiting the Electoral Commission site and, in Name of registered political party scrolling down to "Conservative And Unionist Party", and in Received by typing "Putney". You can also do the same for Putney Labour Party.

Anyone who believes in a level playing field should be concerned about Lord Ashcroft's influence, and relieved that this is finally being investigated by the Electoral Commission.

January crime stats: Roehampton joins the sub-100 club

For the first time since I've been reporting Putney's crime figures, the number of recorded offences in Roehampton ward fell below 100 crimes per 1,000 residents in January.

This is a remarkable achievement by Roehampton's Safer Neighbourhood team, and I congratulate them. In May 2007; the first month I reported Putney's stats, Roehampton crime rate was 127.5 - last month it was 97.7: that's a drop of 25% in just over a year and a half.

January's figures also show that there was no "Christmas spike" in crime, as there was over the December/January period in 2008. Crime fell in four of our six wards, and in most categories of crime. There is also no sign of a surge in so-called "economic crime" linked to the recession, yet, although drugs offences rose in Putney, Wandsworth and London as a whole.

Ram Brewery towers "called in"

Following the news earlier this week that Labour Communities Secretary Hazel Blears had "called in" - the technical term for reviewing the decision on the Ealing Broadway tower plan; she has done the same for the Ram Brewery towers.

You can read more here.

In another sign of how way out of step with Putney the Conservatives have got on this, Tory Council Leader Edward Lister is quoted as attacking the Government's decision saying: "It?s unbelievable that in the depths of a recession we have a minister that would put at risk £1bn of investment in the town centre."

Well, actually Councillor, it's unbelievable that you have railroaded this absurd overdevelopment plan that will clog the remainder of road capacity in central Wandsworth. It's unbelievable that you have forced through plans that will overwhelm local services and transport provision. And it's unbelievable that you think it's a good idea to blight our borough with skyscrapers that will make the Arndale estate towers look miniscule and be visible for miles and miles around.

It's important not to get too carried away here: the independent Government inspector could rule after his review that the plans should proceed. But it is clearly significant that Labour Ministers have stepped in where Tory Mayor Boris Johnson has failed to and looks to be of the view that "out of town" skyscrapers are inappropriate.

I'm delighted at Hazel Blears' decision. It shows beyond doubt that the choice at the next election will be between Tory towers and Labour defending our area from overdevelopment.

Thames Tideway Tunnel briefing

Last night I organised a briefing for the Putney Society and myself from the Head of Thames Water's Tideway Tunnel project. You can read about the project in two of my posts from last year: here and here.

I learnt a huge amount about the project and was grateful for the briefing because there will be far bigger consequences for our area than I originally anticipated.

The main tunnel, which will run from West London through to Beckton in the east end, will take eight years to build - completed in 2020 - and will require six massive boreholes to get the drilling equipment down and the tunnel debris up. Those six holes will require an area the equivalent of three football pitches to be acquired along the route, one of which will need to be open space somewhere in the vicinity of Putney/Barnes.

In addition there are two local overflow discharge outlets - which discharge a mix of rainwater and untreated sewage - direct into the Thames at Putney. One of these is by the mouth of Beverley Brook; the other by Putney Bridge. These two areas will need smaller holes drilled as they are connected to the Tideway tunnel.

This is vitally important work needed to stop the discharge of raw sewage into the Thames whenever it rains heavily. This is an especially big issue for us due to Putney's association with rowing and other riparian activities.



As a result of tonight's meeting, the Thames Water team agreed to address a full meeting of the Putney Society on Thursday 25 June - put the date in your diary if you want to come along and learn more.

No to coal at Kingsnorth

The Government should reject plans to build a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent later this week.

The case against conventional coal-power is overwhelming: it is the principal generator of greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not just the global environment that suffers: locally, coal production pollutes the environment because of associated hazardous chemicals like strychnine which so easily contaminate ground water.

It is worth trying to sort out some of the myths about Kingsnorth before developing this argument. First the Kingsnorth plan won't build an additional power station - it will replace an existing one. To present both sides of the argument, here's what EOn - its owner - argues; and here's the anti-Kingsnorth website. And if you want - in my opinion - a balanced briefing on the pros and cons of this energy debate, click here for an article in The Observer.

I accept E-On's claim that the new Kingsnorth will be cleaner than the old. It just isn't going to be clean enough.

So called "clean coal" technology - that is, a process which extracts the carbon from coal before or during its burning and then injects it deep into the earth, is positive, although it's vastly expensive and needs three separate processes to make the coal clean enough to be useful.

At the weekend, one of the leading climate-change environmentalists, Professor Chris Field, said that the models he himself had been part of creating for the UN panel were looking wrong principally because his panel under-estimated the impact the massive increase in coal-burning power stations in India and China (where one new coal-fired generator is being opened each week) has had.

I wrote recently about the problems with these models - the arctic expedition setting off in just a few days' time is about making cliamte change modelling much more accurate - and this is just another example of why environmentalists need to be so much more careful about the way they use and present their statistics.

Because if they happen to be right and climate change is accelerating, we are getting so close to fatigue among the general public about these issues we could be faced with a "cry wolf" situation where no credibility is left among those who don't care as much as they need to about the environment.

We in the already industrialised West have a very difficult case to make to the still-developing world about halting their use of coal. From their perspective such arguments are very much about kicking away the ladder we have already climbed to wealth and prosperity. Instead, we should be working with these countries to build and subsidise clean coal plants rather than trying to impose limits and targets they won't sign up to.

We should say no to coal at Kingsnorth - because it isn't clean enough coal - but that does mean saying yes in a big way to nuclear energy. And now.

The Tories must suspend their warden reorganisation

During the week since I first exposed the Tory plans to shift around Putney & Roehampton's sheltered housing wardens, I've been unearthing more and more troubling issues about the manner in which this reorganisation has been managed.

Aside from causing huge upset among many of the senior citizens who could be about to lose their cherished warden, the Conservatives have behaved extraordinarily in both a failure to consult and in trying to keep these plans out of the public, democractic spotlight.

Way back in October last year, residents of the Lennox estate sheltered housing scheme in Roehampton sent a petition into the Tory cabinet member for Housing, Councillor Martin Johnson.

Normally when petitions are sent to the council they are reported to the appropriate scrutiny committee and council officers then have to explain, in public, how they think the concerns raised should be tackled.

In this case, Cllr Johnson wrote to one of petitioners saying that he was taking the "unusual step" of sending it straight to the Director of Housing, thus avoiding the democratic scrutiny afforded all other petitions. As a result the residents of the Lennox - some four months on - have still not had an adequate response to the concerns raised in their petition.

The residents of another Roehampton sheltered housing scheme, Minstead Gardens, submitted a similar petition at the start of this year. This too has never seen the light of day; nor has it received an adequate response either.

This is bad enough but at least it might be excusable had the Conservative reorganisation plans themselves been approved by councillors. But this entire plan was never put before any public council committee either: there has been no open accountable scrutiny of these plans.

And even that lack of accountability might be tolerated had those affected by the changes - the elderly residents of the sheltered housing schemes themselves, been given a say. After all, the reorganisation was first mooted back in August 2008: six months ago. That means there has been plenty of time when the council could have talked through their ideas with residents and so avoided a lot of the anxiety and fear that has been created by their secrecy.

The Council talks about this reorganisation being an example of "best practice". But failing to ask residents about what is an essential service for them could never be best practice. Burying petitions is not best practice. And keeping even elected councillors in the dark about a policy that has significant consequences for their constituents is not best practice.

A US Supreme Court Justice once said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". I pledge to shine as much light on these Conservative plans until they do the right thing by our senior citizens.

I've called on the council to suspend the reorganisation until proper consultation and democratic scrutiny has been carried out. It is the very least they can do to correct this botched plan.

Labour steps in to halt latest Tory tower

A couple of weeks ago I reported on the Evening Standard's devastating expose of Boris Johnson's U-turn over tower blocks. The Standard noted how, despite the Tory pledge in last year's London Elections not to allow any more high-rise applications, Boris has subsequently broken that pledge over and over again.

One of those broken promises concerned a 23-storey tower planned for Ealing Broadway, an area - like Putney - without any similar high rise buildings. Today, the Standard is reporting that the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, has "called-in" the Ealing skyscraper which Boris approved. All I can say is: thank goodness London's Mayor isn't the last resort on issues like this.

It's worth noting that at 23 storeys, the Ealing tower is just about HALF the size of one of the the Ram Brewery towers the Conservatives here forced through in December.

Tough questions David Cameron needs to answer #5

Conservative MPs seek opt out from Minimum Wage

A group of Conservative MPs are backing former Wandsworth Council leader Christopher Chope's Ten Minute Rule Bill that would allow individuals and, de facto, employers to opt out of the minimum wage.

Hundreds of Putney, Southfields and Roehampton residents have benefited from the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, and every tax payer benefits from the fact that we now no longer subsidise poverty pay through benefit payouts as we once did.

Is this really the 'progressive' conservatism David Cameron promised the British people?

Our patch: safest in inner London

Over the weekend I was asked by the Putney SW15 website to comment on the latest Home Office crime figures which (unsurprisingly) echo the ones I report on here every month.

The figures show Wandsworth is the safest borough in inner London. They also chime with other opinion-polling carried out by the Council that shows an increase in the number of people satisfied with the local response to crime and anti-social behaviour.

All of a sudden, however, the Conservatives are trumpeting these figures. This after years and years of attacking and undermining our Police; misleading people about police numbers, scaremongering about their effectiveness, claiming that our area is less safe than it is.

Here's an example of the new Conservative spin - the Tory councillor who holds the community safety portfolio in Wandsworth commented: ?The Home Office?s figures confirm the findings of our own research - that Wandsworth is the safest place to live in inner London and crime rates are going down.?

Now I'll be delighted if Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives have turned over a new leaf and now genuinely support our Police - but let's just see how long it is before they next put out a press release complaining about the number of police locally or post a comment on a local discussion forum implying our safer neighbourhood officers are not "proper" police.

If they have finally woken up to the reality of policing in Putney, I hope they might even work with me on focussing resources - council as well as police - on Putney town centre so we can cut the high amount of crime in Thamesfield ward. The way to start would be to introduce town centre patrollers, who'll cut street crime by a third on previous experience in the borough.

But stepping back into the real world, the Tory attacks on Putney's Police will continue. Boris Johnson will forge ahead with his half-billion cut in the Met Police's budget. And the Tory council will refuse to introduce town centre patrollers despite the evidence and the need.

The Conservative Party isn't David Cameron. He's just a front. Behind the soft, fluffly Cameron facade, Putney's cynical, self-serving and out-of-touch Tories are the true face of that unreconstructed party.

That's why we need change locally at the next General Election.

Good news on Barnes station

The government has told South West Trains (SWT) where to go over its plans to substantially reduce ticket office opening hours at Barnes Station.

Companies like SWT, as well as running trains, also have responsibility for stations on routes they operate, including Barnes, Putney and Wandsworth Town. Barnes' ticket office currently opens from 6.25am to 8.05pm on weekdays, from 6.40am to 8.15pm on Saturdays and from 9.10am to 4.40pm on Sundays,

SWT had planned to close the ticket office entirely on Sundays, operate a cursory service on Saturdays and significantly cut back during the week. But what the operator is actually being allowed to get away with are broadly similar hours to what we have now: 6.45am-6.45pm weekdays, 7am-7pm Saturdays and 10am-1pm Sundays.

I am really concerned about the unacceptable and widening gap between increasing fares, increasing customers but at the same time declining services. The argument goes that taxpayers should subsidise railways less which means customers paying an increasing share - but that's a false choice: the bulk of the subsidy for public transport should come not from rail users or general taxation but from less environmentally-friendly modes of transport.

Ticket offices are more than just a place to buy fares and ask for train information: they help with security at stations - especially at places like Barnes in the middle of nowhere. I'm working hard to get SWT to honour its promise to improve Putney Station and it's why it's good news that the Barnes ticket office is staying open.

Tough questions David Cameron needs to answer #4

Earlsfield overcrowding

A new report from the London Assembly Transport Committee has highlighted Earlsfield Station as one of the most overcrowded stations in London.

Sadiq Khan, the MP for Tooting - who represents the majority of Earlsfield's community - has been campaigning on improving Earlsfield Station for years; in fact Labour's council team for Earlsfield made the state of the station a major campaign issue way back in 2002.

But a small section of our constituency also regards itself as Earlsfield - areas like Penwith Road, Strathville Road, Ravensbury Road and Dounesforth Gardens are all in the Putney constituency, albeit a long way from Putney itself.

The Transport Committee is pressing the Mayor to implement some of the promises both he - and Putney's Conservative MP made when they were seeking election but have so far failed to deliver on, such as introducing longer trains, improved reliability and a reduction in the number of cancelled trains.



Elsewhere in London other planned public transport upgrades, such as Crossrail will help relieve pressure. But there is very little for our part of South West London other than the three options above.

Until we can create significantly new capacity for south west London there will continue to be overcrowding problems at Earlsfield. And that makes for unhappy commuters.

You can read a copy of the London Assembly Transport Committee report here.

More fall out from Justine's Question Time performance

Justine Greening's excursion to Bath to appear on BBC Question Time appears to be backfiring on her in all sorts of unfortunate ways.

I've already featured her comments about not wanting to help Putney, Southfields and Roehampton constituents with their problems, but I suspect this latest revelation is going to prove far more distressing to her because it's evidently doing her some damage among Conservative activists, which could tarnish her careerism.

Leading Conservative blogger Iain Dale was also watching Question Time on Thursday, and he was less than impressed with Miss Greening's response to the question of banning Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who was denied entry to the UK to present his film attacking Islam in the Houses of Parliament. This is what Iain Dale had to say:

"I was particularly shocked by Conservative MP Justine Greening's attitude to this. I suppose it echoed the tepid response of Chris Grayling [the Conservative Home Affairs spokesman] yesterday, but it was nevertheless discomforting to see a Conservative MP seemingly unable to comprehend the importance of free speech, especially when she hadn't seen the film."

There's a clear difference between Miss Greening and me on this. I believe in freedom of speech and I think the government was wrong to prevent Mr Wilders coming into this country. Miss Greening either does not believe in freedom of speech (as Iain Dale thinks) or she will say and do whatever her party tells her to without really thinking whether she agrees or not. Pretty unedifying stuff from the MP who represents the constituency that was home to the Putney Debates.

Justine Greening on having to help local people

When I got back home from the meetings I had been at in Putney last night, I got a message from a constituent asking me to look at Justine Greening's performance - in Bath - on BBC Question Time.

They were somewhat unimpressed by her comments about the sort of people who seek the help of their MP. So I had a look on BBC I-Player - you can watch it here - and sure enough, about 43 minutes in, on a discussion supposedly about the Nanny State, this is what she said about Putney constituents:

Justine Greening: "I think it's said to an awful lot of people that, you know, when you have children they're not completely your responsibility. And I think, ultimately, they are - and I see this even in my surgery from week to week - sometimes you know the situations you're confronted with, um, from families, it's just, it's amazing. They're looking to other people, perhaps sometimes too much, to sort out problems that they've got themselves into and I do think we need to balance it up again perhaps."

Now maybe I'm being a little old-fashioned here, but I thought the job of an MP is precisely to help sort out difficulties people find themselves in. Many people will not be responsible for the problems they have. Some will. All deserve help from their MP. But I've come across far too many constituents who have asked Miss Greening for help and been told it's not something she gets involved with to know that, on this issue at least, she means exactly what she says.

Putney Society look set to oppose Tileman House

Last night, while Justine Greening was representing the Conservative Party on the Question Time panel in Bath, I was representing the concerns of St John's Avenue residents - and others -at the Putney Society's Buildings Panel meeting.

The proposed development of Tileman House dominated proceedings. Not a single person spoke in favour of the application and it was clear from the discussion that Putney Society members have a raft of concerns about the application, ranging from height & light, density, overdevelopment and the loss of office space. The other big concern expressed - and one which I have talked about in great detail - is the precedent that the approval of this application will set for other applications along the Upper Richmond Road. I was pleased at how unequivocally the Buildings panel was in calling for this application to be rejected.

The panel's recommendation will be debated at next week's meeting of the Society's executive committee, but all present - including the chairman - seemed confident that the committee would endorse the panel's view. This is an important achievement in the campaign to stop this overdevelopment.

Sheltered housing stupidity

Over the past week, I've been working with sheltered housing residents in Roehampton over crazy plans by the Conservatives to play musical chairs with the wardens who look after the schemes and their residents.

Sheltered housing offers independent living for senior citizens, but with the support of a "warden", someone employed to check on residents, to make sure they're ok and to offer help and support when asked.

The best wardens build great trust and friendship with the residents and become much loved - in fact the strong personal connection is the whole point of such schemes.

The Conservatives are now planning on destroying this link - and with it the trust and security that goes with it - by forcibly rotating wardens around all the borough's sheltered schemes every two years. Worse still, they've done this without consultation with residents and without any council overview and scrutiny. This is not just bad practice and gross arrogance - it has caused real trauma among residents.

The bizarre logic behind this upsetting plan is that senior sheltered housing officers are apparently overworked. How rotating wardens will ease workload is something understood only by the Tories. Wouldn't the rest of us take the view that if a service is overstretched then either workload needs to be reduced or more wardens need to be employed?

There seems to be some belated admission from the Conservatives that they may have failed to consult properly, but that has not prompted them to halt their plans - which come in on 02 March. This is not good enough and I'm doing all I can to help our senior citizens - who deserve so much better - from losing their wardens.

Tough questions David Cameron needs to answer #3

A night less ordinary

Labour is giving 618,000 free tickets to under-26s to theatres across the country for the next two years. Local theatres participating in the scheme include Battersea Arts Centre on Lavender Hill, the Polka Children's Theatre in Wimbledon Broadway, TARA in Tooting,and the Lyric Theatre in King Street, Hammersmith.

The scheme, called "A night less ordinary" is all about introducing children, teenagers and young adults to the magic of the theatre. It's being launched at half term, next week, with tickets becoming available the following week.

There are three relevant links. The first is the scheme's website, and the other two are video clips of Eddie Izzard and Kevin Spacey explaining how to go and take advantage of the free tickets offer:

• http://www.anightlessordinary.org.uk/
• www.silverfish.tv/clients/FreeTheatre/Free_Theatre_Tickets_Eddie.wmv
• www.silverfish.tv/clients/FreeTheatre/Free_Theatre_Tickets_Eddie_and_Kevin.wmv

London Theatres taking part in Labour?s free theatre ticket offer for under 26 year olds are:

The Albany, Deptford; Almedia, Islington; Arcola Theatre Production Company, Dalston; Artsdepot, North Finchley; Barbican Centre, Barbican; Battersea Arts Centre, Battersea; Blue Elephant Theatre, Camberwell; Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush; The Churchill, Bromley; Donmar Warehouse, Covent Garden; Empire Studio Theatre, Hackney; Gate Theatre, Notting Hill Gate; Greenwich Theatre, Greenwich; Half Moon Young People?s Theatr, Limehouse; Hampstead Theatre, Hampstead; Harrow Arts Centre, Harrow; Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith; Millfield Arts Centre, Edmonton; National Theatre, South Bank; Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond; The Pleasance Theatre, Islington; Polka Children's Theatre Limited, Wimbledon; Rose Theatre, Kingston; Roundhouse, Camden; Royal Court, Sloane Square; Soho Theatre, Soho; Tara, Tooting; Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall; Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn; Theatre Royal, Stratford East; Young Vic, Southwark.

Tough questions David Cameron needs to answer #2

Council block kept empty for years

With the weekend's reports about councils giving tenants £25,000 to move out of their homes; and the BBC's revelations that London Mayor Boris Johnson is going to miss his - incredibly modest - target for new affordable homes; you'd think that we'd have exhausted our stock of existing homes wouldn't you?

Welcome to 31-55 Nursery Close, just behind Ravenna Road in the heart of Putney.

31-55 Nursery Close was custom-made sheltered housing for older people built in the late 1970s. For the last two years and then some, it has been empty - decanted of residents because of plans agreed in 2007 to turn its bedsit accommodation into stand-alone flats.

I've found out from the council that work is due to commence on 16 February to convert the blocks into self-contained units rather than bedsits for the elderly: and that's a good thing. But this work will take a year to complete, so by the time its new residents finally start moving in in 2010, it will have been empty for over three years.

The council could have given its former residents one or two further years of undisrupted stay, instead of moving them out prematurely. It could have been used as temporary accommodation for a few of the thousands on the council's housing waiting list. It could even have been used as a rough sleepers shelter during this exceptionally bitter spell of recent weather. And throughout, it could have been generating rent for the council.

Instead its been left empty. How many other properties are the Conservatives keeping empty?

Freedom fries

What a shame that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has allowed his critical views on the UK Government's economic stimulus package to become known. However, the real embarassment would appear to be that of the occupant of the Elysee Palace rather than Downing Street, in light of the former's failure to grasp the facts.

Contrary to President Sarkozy's belief that the VAT cut hasn't worked, the reality is that it is one of the two initiatives the Government took last Autumn that have already borne results, as the independent and respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed.

The first of the two was the first bank bailout. It worked because the banks did not go to the wall: they continue to survive, even if some amongst them have so spectacularly failed to grasp that they're no longer going to be able to continue rewarding themselves for abject failure as before.

And the second was the VAT cut. Not just because it put on average £5 a week in the pockets of everyone. But because the sole sector of the economy that didn't shrink in the last quarter of 2008 was retail. A coincidence? Hardly.

So why might the French Government pour scorn on tax cuts?

A more credible reason is that France believes in the European high-tax social model. They believe that the state is the engine of the economy; that big bureaucracies are the order of the day; that people should pay huge taxes in order to subsidise inefficient nationalised industries and a grossly wasteful state. It's why strikes continue to cripple France two decades after they ceased being an effective means of protest in the UK. It's why unemployment is so much higher in France than the UK. It's why the UK has overtaken France as a larger economy. And it's why tax cutting is anathema - even to a politician supposedly of the right, like Nicolas Sarkozy.

Over in the USA, Republicans are criticising President Obama's stimulus package for not providing enough tax cuts. It seems to me that if we're being criticised from the US hard right for not cutting taxes enough, and from Europe for cutting them at all, then we're in the mainstream and are getting it just about right.

Tough questions David Cameron needs to answer #1

Old maps of Putney 2

As promised, here's the second of the maps of Putney from Bacon's Up-To-Date Atlas & Guide to London, published probably in the 1930s - click here for the earlier post covering the Southfields and Wandsworth parts. And click on the image above for a much higher resolution scan.

This map covers the majority of Putney and Roehampton. The most obvious difference between today's map is that there is no Alton estate in Roehampton: the only resemblance with Roehampton today is what is now the Alton East: Alton Road and Bessborough Road. But even here the type of housing on either side of these roads was very different; grand houses and smaller cottages.

The rest of the land west of Roehampton Lane comprises the estate of Downshire House, Mount Clare, Manresa House and the Maryfield Convent - all buildings which remain today, just surrounded by an estate, rather than expanses of open land.

Similarly, in the north of Roehampton there is no Lennox estate at the end of Priory Lane, and the crescent-shaped housing block today called Fairacres was in those days called Lower Grove.

Moving east from Roehampton you can see how it was that the Telegraph Pub was such an important inn and communications post for travellers into and out of London. Today the pub is part of a relatively isolated cul-de-sac community in the middle of the Heath but until fairly recently, it was right on the crossroads of major traffic routes: Portsmouth Road, Telegraph Road and Wildcroft Road all of which extended right across the Heath.

And just north of the Heath we again see what Putney looked like prior to the building of huge estates: where the map shows expansive grounds around Exeter House is now the Ashburton Estate and Elliott School. In fact the only one of today's estates can be seen already built: the Dover House estate around Dover House Road.

Roehampton and West Putney aren't the only areas where major council estates were built after the war: West Hill ward - the area east of Wimbledon Parkside has also changed unrecognisably. But as I mentioned in my post on Southfields, you can see reflected in the estates of today several of the historic names shown on this map: Levana Lodgeand Park Lodge in Victoria Drive now Levana Close and Park Lodge now a care home of the same name for example. And many of the mansions on Wimbledon Parkside still remain: Chivelston, Albemarle and Spencer House.

The madness crippling housing policy

When I read stories like the one above that appears in today's Times, I sometimes despair at the insanity that has dogged housing policy for the past thirty years.

There's nothing new about the "revelations" the Times thinks it has exposed: this is simply the progression of the policy councils like Westminster began that got dubbed "homes for votes" in the 1980s: offering incentives to get long-standing council tenants out of their homes. Then, Westminster was doing so for electoral purposes: replacing supposedly Labour-voting council tenants with evidently Conservative-supporting leaseholders in key marginal wards. Today, this is being done to free up homes for those who are going to be made homeless by the recession (though again the opportunities for gerrymandering are many).

This is not entirely a bad idea: it is a good thing, for example, to encourage pensioners to downsize to a smaller flat if it releases a two, three or four bed property that can be given to a family. I fully support such incentive schemes.

But here's the 'emperor's new clothes' revelation: the answer to a massive affordable housing shortfall is not to play (very costly) musical chairs with the existing, insufficient amount of homes. It is to build many, many more affordable homes to rent.

There are 4.5 million people already waiting for affordable homes. That's forecast to rise to over 5 million by the end of the recession. Crowbarring existing council tenants out of their homes in return for a lump sum to set them up in a private home risks simply switching one group at threat of being made homeless with another. Except that the former council tenants will, by taking the council bribe, be surrendering any right to being rehoused should they find themselves fall on hard times. This is unjust and - I have to say - typical of the Conservatives.

Once again I have some sympathy with the Taxpayers' Alliance on this issue: they've said "Council housing should be a safety net for those falling on hard times...when you have some councils dishing out £25,000 with no questions asked and very few conditions, that smacks of desperation rather than good management."

They're right - it is a desperate measure. £25,000 could build a new affordable home; especially if using advanced pre-fabricated methods that manufacture entire units in a factory that just need assembly on-site. The big cost in housing is the land, not the construction.

That's why the amount of public land being sold off for private housing has been - and continues to be - an absolute scandal in boroughs like ours. Where we have publicly-owned land, the first call upon it MUST be for affordable housing. No more sweetheart deals with private developers to pile up massive overdevelopment of private apartments for which there is no market.

One of the reasons I think that people aren't convinced by the Government's response to the economic downturn is less that the investment isn't working but rather that it appears to always be a step or two behind.

The same is true with housing: the government only two weeks ago announced some lifting of the bar on councils building new homes. But that's not going to be enough to avert this crisis: we have to lift all restrictions and more than that: councils need to be directed to build affordable homes for rent. And if need be - as it will with the most resistant councils like Wandsworth - those directions will need to come with mandatory targets to force them to meet the local need they refuse to address.

New Putney Paper published

The Spring 2009 version of my Putney Paper is now available to read on this website - just click here.

In these economic times it's clear that the dividing line between the two main political parties is between those who have a plan to get us out of the global downturn and those who would do nothing.

I'm very strongly in the first of those camps; while it's evident that Putney's Conservative MP and councillors fall in the latter.

It's not just nationally that we need a plan - not least because, with the billions being invested to mitigate this recession it's only right that Putney gets a share.
In this edition of the Putney Paper, I talk about some of my ideas for recession-proofing Putney. Central to that is my long-running campaign to improve our town centre. I'm delighted that local architect Tom Jestico agreed to do some sketches for me of what a regenerated Putney High Street and town square might look like.

But we need a plan for Putney for far more than just to improve our town centre, critical though that is. Almost everyone I talk to is seriously worried about the skyscraper threat to our area the Conservatives are saddling Putney with for generations to come. The reason the developers think they can get away with all this overdevelopment is because we lack a coherent plan for Putney. One of my top priorities is to provide the local leadership that's been lacking on these issues.

And what is the purpose of building all these sky-high luxury penthouses - other than to create massive white elephants that will either remain empty for years or so gridlock our area's roads and services that Putney will cease to be the area we know and love it to be. Instead of penthouses, we need affordable homes to rent, especially at a time when some will be losing the homes they have.

I talk about all these issues and more in the new edition of The Putney Paper.

Old maps of Putney

As a local historian, I enjoy looking at old maps of the area. A forerunner of the A-Z maps of London, which sadly doesn't have a date of publication in it but would, at latest, have been printed in the 1930s, is Bacon's Up-To-Date Atlas & Guide to London. Price: sixpence.

Today and tomorrow, I'll publish the local maps from that book on this blog, starting with Southfields and Wandsworth town, below. Click on the image to get a much larger version (which is a 3mb file, so may take a while to open). I've added some observations below the picture.



The biggest changes in this part of the world can be found towards the north of the map where the river Wandle enters the Thames. Have a look at the King George's Park area.

First, note the viaduct that ran across the park, just north of Mapleton Road - it runs from St Ann's Hill across to Merton Road before going underground at either end. And Mapleton Road used to be a through-road to Garratt Lane.

Also, have a look at how much freer the Wandle itself was: where Neville Gill Close is now the river used to form a large pool. It also had a little spur running alongside Buckhold Road, where the new Hardwick's Square development now is.

A more significant branch off the Wandle occurs even closer to the Thames, where it snaked alongside Frogmore to a road that's no longer there: Raft Road, parallel to Sudlow Street (it's now the Wandsworth Council Depot). One of the older members of Putney Labour Party used to live there in the days when the river branched out, and apparently there was quite a scandal when a young girl drowned while playing alongside this section.

It's also interesting that what is now called Ram Street, alongside the Brewery and where the 220 and 270 buses go down, was originally a continuation of [Old] York Road, before the one way system was introduced; and Fairfield Street that runs past the entrance to the Town Hall continued all the way down to the Thames (now that part of Fairfield Street is part of Smugglers Way). There's another member of Putney Labour Party who used to live in Warple Road - which is now Swandon Road which leads to the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout.

On the left-hand side of the map, in what is West Hill ward (west of the District Line to Southfields), you can see some of what the area was like before the large council estates that were built after the war. Whitlock Drive has not been built; instead Edgecombe Hall - after which the estate there is named, and it's acres of grounds - remains.

One of the things that I think is really important is that historic local names survive; in this area in particular a lot of the blocks that now exist are named after mansions, old roads, fields or other historical names; for example "Florys" lives on the corner of Augustus Road and Princes Way lives on in Florys Court; and Allenswood, Ambleside and Fernwood are all now blocks on the Wimbledon Park Estate.

Tories on teen gangs

White elephants

Hardwick's Square was among the first of the recent massive housing developments the Conservatives approved for our area - it's the site just behind Wandsworth High Street, and it's far from complete.

Today the Wandsworth Guardian is reporting the folly of the Conservatives' housing strategy: the stack-em-up, pile-em-high mentality that is not only blighting our area with high rise blocks but is creating hundreds of empty private homes when the area is in desperate need of affordable housing to rent.

And it's not just the Guardian realising this problem. Some of the most senior council officers are admitting how wrong the Conservatives have got it. In an email to my campaign on Monday, one of them - who to spare embarrassment I won't name - wrote:

"Because of the housing/mortgage situation and recession, these are not filling as rapidly as predicted...I suspect this will now plateau out somewhat."

That being the case, why on earth are the Conservatives ramming through hundreds and hundreds more homes: 500 on the brewery in Wandsworth town; 150 in the new "Argento Tower" block beside the Arndale shopping centre; another 500 in Clapham Junction; 100+ at Tileman House and goodness knows how many more they want to cram into the remainder of the Riverside Quarter site behind Wandsworth Park.

The Conservatives are completely out of control. I can only stop them with your votes.

No place like home

Tileman House consultation problems

A number of local residents have contacted me directly to complain that they have not received the consultation notice from the council regarding the important Tileman House planning application.

In addition, a number of irate residents have posted similar concerns on the local putneysw15.com website. Given the significance and controversial nature of this application I contacted the Borough Planner on Monday to raise these concerns.

I was pleased to receive a very prompt reply from him which I am reproducing in full below as I believe it is important that people have full confidence in the consultation process.

I welcome the acknowledgment that there has been a problem, as I do the action proposed to remedy the situation. I will be doing my bit to help ensure that those residents most likely to be affected by this application are aware of it, and have a full ability to let their views be known.

Here's the reply:


Dear Mr King,

Thank you for your email.

I think it is fair to say that we have had some problems with the company we used on this occasion to deliver the newsletter. Although from the information they have provided to us I hope the number of addresses missed is not as great as suggested.

When we have a major application that is likely to generate more than normal public interest we use a newsletter to notify people in the area. Often, as in this case, the newsletter is in colour and includes visual images from the submission information. So I hope it isn?t binned with other junk mail.

We provide basic details of the application, say where further information can be obtained and invite comments. We adopt a neutral stance, neither in favour or against the application and, in order not to lead respondents, we invite comments rather than objections. Where we use a newsletter, the extent of consultation is wider than would be the norm for most applications where we consult by letter.

For this application I wonder if the boundary of the area could have been more tightly drawn? The map of the area has been posted on the website. In addition, of course, for an application like this we post site and press notices.

We had a number of newsletter drops due to go out around the same time for major applications, including for the Springfield hospital site. Given the pressures this places on using planning staff who often distribute newsletter at the weekends, we took the opportunity to market test and obtained prices from specialist leaflet distribution companies. We received a competitive price from a company and decided to test their services.

We?ve been disappointed with the outcome and it has generated much additional (and unwanted) work for the case officer. She has followed up some emailed complaints from residents that they haven?t received the newsletter with a PDF emailed copy. She has also followed the matter up with the distribution company and has a list of the addresses they concede they have been unable to deliver to. She will try to deliver those herself or put a copy of the newsletter in the post to those addresses, so all the addresses we identified should be covered. On the evidence to date, it seems to me that our market testing exercise shows that our in-house staff are more reliable and do a better job.

If people have internet access then they can get information from the Council?s website. Click on the planning service page, the first thing to come up under planning headlines is "Redevelopment proposed for Tileman House". If you click on that you get:

Redevelopment of Tileman House, Upper Richmond Road
The council has received an application for planning permission to redevelop the site at 131-133 Upper Richmond Road, to construct three linked blocks alond Upper Richmond Road of 12 storeys, 15 storeys and 8 storeys in height, and a 12 storey block to the rear, providing 99 flats plus office and commercial units. For more information contact Helen Keegan on 020 8871 8411. Comments must be received by 1st March 2009.

More information: consultation leaflet

More information: search the planning register and enter application number: 2008/5428

At the moment, I?m keeping an eye on what has happened but, provided the case officer doesn?t have difficulties dispatching the newsletters, I don?t think we will need to either extend consultation or the consultation period.

Please let me know if you need any more information.

Have your say on the Tileman House application

In response to the widespread public concern about not being adequately consulted by the Council over the significant Tileman House planning application I have today launched my own consultation here online.

It contains all the information you need about this application and the opportunity to have your say via my online survey.

The address is www.stuartking.net/tileman - you can also access it from the drop down Campaign HQ menu above - it's the first link.

Every survey you submit I will send on to the council provided that you tick the box giving your consent.

And don't forget that there are two ways to keep up to speed with all the overdevelopment issues facing Putney: by visiting my overdevelopment page in the issues drop-down menu, or by subscribing to my e-news bulletin: as well as the regular fortnightly bulletin I have a special group for anyone especially interested in these overdevelopment threats.

George Osborne's schoolboy errors

Satisfaction in NHS highest in 25 years

More people than at any time in the past 25 years are satisfied with the NHS, and those who have had direct personal experience of the health service are the most satisfied.

That's the finding of the annual British Social Attitudes survey that was published last week. In 1997, the last survey under the Conservatives, just 35% were very or quite satisfied with our NHS. That figure is now 51%. 69% of people who have experienced in-patient care said they were satisfied with it. 60% were satisfied with out-patient services. 76% are satisfied with their GP service.

And this might be an explanation for the growing confidence in our NHS:

Twittering

In the coming weeks I'm going to be using some more innovations in my campaign.

The first is already set up: I now use the "Twitter" status update service, which enables me to post a straightforward one or two line message on the front page of my site throughout the day, letting you know what I'm up to or to flag-up breaking news.

The twitter box can be found on the bottom left of the front page - but the great thing about Twitter is that you don't have to keep coming back to the site to find out what's happening: by following my tweets here you can keep in touch via email or your own favourite websites, like facebook or myspace.

And don't forget you can also join my Stuart King for Putney facebook page.

True Grit

There have been the usual "why can't Britain cope with extreme weather" comments since the snow started falling; both in Putney and the national news. I've even heard the comment "We're like a third world country".

Well hardly.

It's evidently the case that Wandsworth and other boroughs have struggled with the snow - some roads probably haven't been gritted and even where that has happened, the amount of snow that has fallen has mitigated its impact.

Why do other countries manage to keep going? Because heavy snow is a regular occurrence in places like North America, Scandanavia and northern Europe. For them it is worthwhile - if not essential - to invest in the infrastructure needed to keep their countries running through longer periods of extreme weather.

Some politicians - notably the laughable Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lewis, who can't come across a bandwagon without leaping on it - are using this as another example to talk down our country.

My view is that it would be a huge waste of money to invest the very significant amounts of money needed to keep all our roads open for a once-in-twenty-years event like this. Would buying ploughs and other specialist equipment that stays unused for decades at a time really represent good value for money?

Yes, it's inconvenienced many of us. Yes, it's cost the British economy a lot of money, possibly up to a billion pounds. But settled snow in London is such a rarity these days that perhaps the best response is to enjoy the upsides - the camaraderie created amongst strangers and the faces of joy on little ones enjoying the snow.

Finally, I'd like to say thank you to the council employees, emergency services workers and all those others who have been working around the clock to keep our public services working as well as they have been.

Even Boris opposes the Tories' Roehampton plans

To the list of opponents of the Conservatives' plans to redevelop the top end of Danebury Avenue can now be added the (Conservative) Mayor of London.

Wandsworth Council has been advised that their current application for Danebury Avenue does not comply with the Mayors' London Plan (the overarching plan for the capital) in a number of respects including housing and tenure mix, site layout and open space, residential quality of design, sustainability, transportation, cycle and car parking.

In fact, every single aspect of the plans that residents and I have said the Council has got wrong. You can read the report here.

The table below says it all, really.

Thames Water fined £125,000 for Wandle spillage

As I reported late last year, Magistrates referred Thames Water up to Croydon Crown Court for sentencing over the terrible spillage of bleach into the River Wandle that killed tonnes of fish and did severe damage to the river.

The Magistrates passed the case on because they were limited in the amount of fines they could impose on Thames Water but felt the mistake had been so catastrophic that a bigger punishment needed to be imposed. And so it was: Croydon Court judges are making Thames Water pay £125,000 for the damage they did.

I think this fine is proportionate and sends a clear message that London's tributary rivers are as important as the Thames to our capital.

238,000 pages visited in 2008

Around 30,000 unique visitors paid stuartking.net a visit during 2008; equivalent to around half the electorate of Putney. Those 30,000 visitors returned just short of 75,000 times, and accessed almost a quarter of a million pages which is amazing for a local website like mine. So thank you very, very much for your patronage - I hope the site becomes more and more useful as we develop and upgrade it.

January 2009 saw the second-highest number of visits in a month ever: some 3,800 unique visitors. The comparative figure for January 2008 was just 1,735 so visits have more than doubled in twelve months.

One of the more amusing webstats to look up is the search terms many visitors use to reach the website. Unsurprisingly "Stuart King" and variants of that are the most common phrases, but this year alone former resident Sir Edwin Saunders is giving me a run for my money with over 400 searches for him directing people here. More surreal though might be "survey of wood level brandlehow", "Nicolai Chauchesku" or "brothels in wandsworth" (just for the record there is no such reference on this website!).

This year alone we have welcomed visitors from such far-flung places as Honduras, Namibia, Togo, Monaco, the US Military (what have I done?!), Ukraine, Finland, Israel and South Korea, withe the US, Sweden, Canada and Australia the non-UK countries I get most hits from.

Who'd have thought web-stats could be so informative?!

Office space - especially now - is vital for Putney's economy

In an earlier post I outlined the three big concerns I have about the Tileman House planning application. These were:

1. Height
2. Loss of office space
3. Housing - too much and not enough of it affordable

I'm going to talk a little about the second of these, because it is an issue that often gets overlooked. I've written before about the concerted attempt by developers to keep office blocks in Putney empty for years, so that they can exploit another Tory planning loophole that allows them to change the use of the buildings after a period of time into much more lucrative housing.

Tileman House is the classic example of this. The office part of the building has been empty for years - I can't actually remember the last time it was occupied. The only use made of the building in recent years has been the occupation of 19 residential flats.

In recent years Putney has become far more dependent on restaurants and cafes, while losing the wide range of shops and market stalls it used to benefit from. Many of these food and drink outlets depend on the lunch trade which in large part is made up of those who work in Putney's office blocks.

The parts of the country weathering the current bad economic conditions the best are those that have a diverse jobs base drawing equally from different sectors of the economy. The Conservatives locally are pursuing the diametric opposite of that sensible, pragmatic policy: reducing the diversity of Putney and, in so doing, weakening the remaining sectors such as our food and drink outlets.

One of the reasons we so urgently need a plan for Putney - other than the need to stop the slew of high-rise overdevelopment - is to close the loophole that's allowing this loss of office space and threatening our economy. We can all see how damaging the lack of a plan for Putney is: our High Street remains a disgrace, the lack of diversity in our shops is ridiculous and the empty shops that have for years been evident in the High Street itself are now spreading into Putney Exchange for the first time.

The Conservatives lack any vision for Putney and any local leadership to provide it.